I beg to move this amendment standing in my name. I realise that my following remarks risk throwing petrol on an already blazing flame and that my great friend and former colleague my noble friend Lord Young will probably never speak to me again. However, I say again that I fully acknowledge that the committee did exactly what was required of it and went to extraordinary lengths and made a huge personal commitment in doing so. In no sense was anything I said on the earlier amendments meant to imply anything other than huge admiration for what it has done. I hope that point is well taken. However, I was trying—obviously ineffectively—to argue that the work of the committee, however good, could never address the sort of issues that I was trying to articulate as they concerned private interests.
I follow the noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, in saying that a 19th century Victorian approach to dealing with the vested interests of private landowners is being used in a situation where it is completely inappropriate. It is not in any sense the committee’s fault that we are today talking about the issues that it may feel it knocked on the head and put to bed. There are still issues out there and they were raised by my new friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, because she has experience, as I have, of how they will operate in practice. This issue is about structure.
I have submitted evidence on all this to the committee that was set up to look at hybrid Bills. I hope that it will consider that evidence as we go forward. Why have we not had an opportunity to discuss the committee’s report? That could still be done. It is the biggest gap of all. As I understand it, there is no procedure as regards discussing the excellent report, which I have read. I have looked at every piece of evidence the committee received and I have read every transcript of the events, so I am not unaware of its work. I almost died but I did it. However, the report will never be discussed. That seems an extraordinary lacuna in the process of looking at the Bill. It needs to be picked up because there are things in the report which ought to be brought out and discussed. There are things which perhaps we could agree to disagree about but at least they could be aired and ventilated in a discussion. That is a terrible mistake. I move on.
My last point concerns an issue that came up and reflects points made on it both today and on Tuesday.